Metal Gear Solid HD Collection

MGS HD Review

For a series that preaches the virtues of silence and stealth, the Metal Gear series desperately wants to be heard. Kojima Productions has always been adamant that its games should contain some kind of jumbled ideology, even when the studio isn't sure what virtues it's actually trying to extol. These aren't upbeat war games, then, but the big, bold and silly action movies of the 1980s are instrumental to their inception - there are hints of almost all of them from time to time, but notable reference must go to Escape from New York's eye-patched hero, Snake Plissken. I find myself both loving and hating the series in equal measure, riddled as it is with such obvious and detracting waffle. Often confusing cerebral thought with nonsensical melodrama, Metal Gear Solid is a collection of utterly barmy games that ridiculously labour over the minute details while ignoring even the most basic of big pictures. And how come nobody else on the team has ever been brave enough to tell Hideo Kojima he's in desperate need of a half-decent script editor? Despite their myriad flaws, however, almost all of them are absolutely vital additions to the video game canon.millennium.